Subscribe To

Monday, 15 May 2017

Radio New Zealand claims Antarctic ice is not melting like the Arctic

"Temperatures
in the Antarctic Peninsula have increased by 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit
(2.5 degrees Celsius) over the past 50 years — five times the rate
of the rest of the planet. And scientists think that warm ocean
waters could be melting Antarctica's glaciers as they flow under the
floating tongues of ice."---Sometimes
when I switch on Radio New Zealand I have to pinch myself and ask
whether they (or I) exist in some parallel universe.

I
have been covering news from Antarctica for five years and so you can
imagine my surprise when I heard an item advertised on “why the
Arctic ice is melting and Antarctica is not”

My
surprise disappeard when I heard the academic describe how she gets
all her information from computer models inputting all the
information.

No
wonder she seems so out of touch and allows Radio New Zealand give
the impression that sea ice in Antarctica is melting. She must have
been so busy in front of her computer that she has not noticed the
information about disappearing sea ice from NASA and others over the
summer.

One
thing that struck me is Antarctica has no Peter Wadhams who has been
observing the thickness of Arctic ice from a submarine over many
years.

They
do not appear to have a reliable method of measuring Antarctic ice
thickness – so they are attempting to catch up – using a DC3!

Of
course going back 3 years the Arctic ice extent was at a record. That
was when the Russian ship got stuck in the ice in the middle of
summer,something that delighted the deniers.

She
seems to have missed out on research that indicates that Antarctic
ice is melting from below.

We
all know what she points out about the differences between the
Arctic and Antarctica - that Antarctica is and surrounded by sea
while the Arctic is sea surrounded by land, so the sea ice behaves
quite different.

On Sept. 19, 2014, the five-day average of
Antarctic sea ice extent exceeded 20 million square kilometers for the
first time since 1979, according to the National Snow and Ice Data
Center. The red line shows the average maximum extent from 1979-2014.

Kathryn
Ryan talks to the University of Otago's sea-ice expert Professor Pat
Langhorne. Sea-ice physics is a relatively new discipline, and there
are many important questions that are still unanswered, such as: why
is Antarctic sea ice not decreasing like Arctic sea ice? The
answers to these questions are believed to be crucial to
understanding the effects climate change is having on different parts
of the continent.

These
are some of the items that seem to have eluded Professor Pat
Langhorne and Kathryn Ryan of Radio New Zealand who I have learned
are the biggest ABRUPT climate change deniers anywhere.Watch the video below to see to see how Arctic sea ice is not melting - lol.Animation showing the decline of the sea ice around Antarctica over the period from November 16, 2016, to January 4, 2017. For comparison, the blue line shows the 1979-2000 average. Click on image to view animated version.

Antarctic
Sea Ice Likely to Hit New All-Time Record Lows Over Coming Days

Throughout
the record global heat of 2016 and on into 2017, the world’s sea
ice has taken a merciless pounding.

In
the Northern Hemisphere, extreme warming of the polar region pushed
Arctic sea ice extents to record low daily ranges throughout the
winter, spring and fall of 2016. And even today, after many months of
daily record lows, sea ice in the Arctic remains more reduced (in
most measures)
than it has ever been for this time of year.

On
the other side of the world, the story is much the same. For it now
appears that the ocean region around Antarctica is about to
experience an all-time record annual low
for sea ice:

(JAXA
Antarctic sea ice measure for
all years since 1978 shows a strong challenge to the previous record
low for extent set in 1997 [lower left hand corner of the graph].
With 2-4 weeks left in the melt season, the present measure is just
about 170,000 square kilometers above the 1997 record low during
Southern Hemisphere summer.)

Anomalous
warmth, though less intense than in the Arctic zone, did finally
begin to invade the austral polar region during Southern Hemisphere
spring and summer (2016-2017). And since mid October, sea ice
surrounding Antarctica has remained in record low daily ranges (see
lower red line on the graph above). Wednesday, February 1st’s, JAXA
measure of 2.42 million square kilometers of sea ice extent remaining
is now just about 170,000 square kilometers above the previous record
low sea ice extent set during mid-to-late February of 1997.

(Warmth
building into Antarctica over the next two weeks may be the final
straw that tips the near ocean region into new all-time record lows
for sea ice extent. The above GFS model prediction for February 9th
rendered by
Climate Reanalyzer shows
temperature anomalies predicted for Antarctica and the surrounding
regions. Red to orange is warmer than average, blue to purple is
colder than average.)

As
a result, over the next week, temperatures around Antarctica and in
the nearby region of the Southern Ocean are expected to average
between 1.2 and 1.8 C above the already warmer than normal 1979
through 2000 average. Meanwhile, parts of West Antarctica’s coastal
zone are expected to hit as high as 5-20 C above that average.

With
more warmth on the way, with measures already striking nearly half a
million square kilometers below previous daily record lows, and with
at least two weeks remaining in the melt season, it appears likely
that we are in for a new all-time record low for sea ice extent in
the ocean region surrounding Antarctica. If the new record does
occur, it will happen during a time when the Arctic is also
experiencing daily record lows for sea ice during Northern Hemisphere
winter and as the world is experiencing global temperatures in the
range of 1 to 1.2 degrees Celsius above 1880s averages.

Climate
Change Shrinking Antarctic Snows

“When
I used to come to Antarctica in the 1990s, it never used to rain,”
said Rodolfo Sanchez, director of the Argentine Antarctic Institute
(IAA).

“Now
it rains regularly—instead of snowing,” he told AFP during an
Argentine government visit to King George Island, off the tip of the
western Antarctic peninsula.

Scientists
monitoring conditions at the base say the average temperature here
has increased by 2.5 degrees Celsius (4.5 degrees Fahrenheit) over
the past century.

“The
glacier used to reach all the way to the shore,” Sanchez says. “Now
there is a 500-meter (550-yard) wide beach.”

Dark
scars of rock are showing through what were once spotless sheets of
white snow on the glaciers’ flanks.

“Antarctica
is a thermometer that shows how the world is changing,” said
Adriana Gulisano, a physicist at Argentina’s National Antarctic
Directorate.

“There
is no place where climate change is more in evidence.”

Wildlife
signs

Local
wildlife also appears to reflect to the change.

Scientists
at the Carlini base say a pair of yellow-throated King penguins have
swum up to mate nearby for the past three years.

Although
the theory is not confirmed, they suspect another sign of climate
change. The species had previously been thought to be restricted to
warmer spots on the Falkland Islands and the Argentine mainland.

Technician
Luis Souza, 56, has divided his time since 1979 between Buenos Aires
and the Carlini base, where he has studied migrating birds:
cormorants, gulls and penguins.

More
crucially, scientists say melting ice is disrupting the breeding of
krill, a shrimp-like creature that serves as food for numerous
species.

The conventional wisdom

It
scientifically is a desert.

Nestled
around the South Pole, where the coldest temperature on Earth was
recorded and which doesn't receive sunlight for months every year,
it's sometimes hard to think of icy Antarctica as a desert. But it is
the world's largest one because very little precipitation falls
there — on average, it gets less than 2 inches (50 millimeters) a
year, mostly as snow.

Despite
the low snowfall, vast glaciers cover 99 percent of Antarctica's
surface. That's because the average temperature (minus 54 degrees
Fahrenheit, or minus 48 degrees Celsius) slows down evaporation to a
crawl. Over long periods of time, the snowfall accumulates at a rate
faster than Antarctica's ablation, according to "Discovering
Antarctica," a project of the U.K.'s Royal Geographical Society.

Parts
of Antarctica are showing strong signs of warming up along with
global climate change, however. Temperatures in the Antarctic
Peninsula have increased by 4.5 degrees Fahrenheit (2.5 degrees
Celsius) over the past 50 years — five times the rate of the rest
of the planet. And scientists think that warm ocean waters could be
melting Antarctica's glaciers as they flow under the floating
tongues of ice.